SMS Firewall implemented in Zain Kuwait

2024: SMS Firewall Implementations

Eastwind helps monetize A2P traffic from the operator Zain Kuwait. Eastwind announced this on August 9, 2024.

With Eastwind's SMS Firewall, the operator can not only block spam and prevent fraudulent attacks on their network, but also increase revenue from A2P traffic. It was the task of monetization that faced Zain Kuwait in this project.

A2P (application to person) - commercial SMS traffic, that is, messages from various brands and companies. These can be codes for authorization, advertising SMS and any other content from services and stores.

Companies send SMS to their customers not directly, but through content providers - there may be several of them in the delivery chain. At the same time, the brand is usually not aware that some unscrupulous intermediaries use "gray" routes to send A2P traffic. For example, the company pays the cost of an international message, the content provider masks SMS as local and keeps the price difference - as a result, the operator does not receive income. On average, lost profits from such schemes are estimated at $8 billion annually - for all telecom operators in the world.

To detect unscrupulous providers in its network, Zain Kuwait chose the EW SMS Firewall solution. Since the end of 2022, the Eastwind vendor has been helping the operator monetize A2P traffic and return lost income.

To implement SMS Firewall in Zain Kuwait, it was necessary to customize the product for the customer's infrastructure. All content providers of the operator were connected through a single SMS platform Zain, which made it difficult to determine the source of messages using the SMPP protocol. To identify the senders, the Eastwind team parsed detailed information about all SMS messages through the operator's platform.

Based on the consolidated data, EW SMS Firewall began to match the sender ID and the SMS type - in order to identify inconsistencies typical of "gray" traffic sent at a reduced cost. Now the operator receives regular reports on all messages: which SMS passed along white routes, and which - bypassing tariffs.

Thanks to these reports, the operator receives proof of content provider fraud. Then he can recover compensation from unscrupulous intermediaries, renegotiate an agreement with them or exclude messages from the delivery chain.

In addition to monetizing gray A2P traffic, Eastwind product:

• Protects against spam. Passes all SMS for subscribers through antispam filters: analyzes the sender of the message, text and other parameters. If the SMS has signs of a spam campaign, the decision blocks it.
• Fights scammers. EW SMS Firewall protects against SMS flooding, SMS spoofing and several other types of attacks.

For August 2024, these product capabilities have not been implemented by the Zain operator, but we are discussing their possible launch in the future.

Zain Kuwait is ready to develop our collaboration on monetizing A2P traffic and is considering using SMS Firewall to solve other problems. We appreciate such trust on the part of the operator, "said Andrey Alimpiev, Head of Eastwind International Market Development.